


Inklings

by Feytwilight



Category: Original Work
Genre: Epic, F/M, Fantasy, Gen, Humour, M/M, Steampunk, Thief, Werewolf, magician, magick, strange spelling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-16
Updated: 2013-09-16
Packaged: 2017-12-26 18:42:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feytwilight/pseuds/Feytwilight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Listen to your inklings, for they will always pull your heart in the right direction...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Petunia

**Author's Note:**

> Very much a work in progress and a slow goer, if anyone can comment or review, it would be much appreciated.

The City of Ludlow slumbered, fitfully.   It was said that Ludlow was the most beautiful and enchanting city in all of Lud, especially by night.  It was, of course, added in a conspiratory whisper that it was also the most dangerous. Lampposts lined the twisted streets, turning them into iridescent, snaking lines of purple, red, yellow, green, and blue.  At night, Ludlow was a dark mound that seemed to be being grasped by a colourful wizened hand, its fingers curling down the sides to land at the foot of the curving hill.  The City was the Capitol of the land of Lud and all its minor territories.  The fact that its minor territories were twice as large as Lud was rarely ever mentioned by anyone.  Mouse ceased musing as her gaze traveled across the belighted city and returned her focus to the dark building across from her or more precisely at the third story window.  She crouched in the shadow of a blackened chimney, hidden.  The night belonged to those who lived in the shadows, like her.  She inched her foot silently along the roof to ease the pain of squatting so long.  Her companion suddenly spoke from atop her shoulder, his voice soft and tiny,

“Hm, you are sure this is a good idea, right?”  Mouse barely glanced at her companion, an extraordinarily small form of tangula.  She said imperiously,

“I know what I’m doing, I’m more than ready for this test.”  All four of his liquid eyes swiveled towards her as he said,

“If you say so, I just wanted my doubts noted is all.” 

“Duly noted, now shut up.”  Jetser flexed his wooly legs and bobbed up and down pulling at her shirt annoyingly as he twittered in her ear,

“Aye, aye Capitan.  As you wish.  As a tangula, I am, of course, duty bound to obey all orders and requests, which my bondmate may choose to give.  And I-”

“Cogs, I get it, now shut up _please_ Jetser, I’m trying to concentrate.”  Jetser folded himself into a ball, relaxed, and smugly closed all his eyes.  He was rather fuzzy, coloured with random black and white splotches, and extremely small for his kind which usually towered above carriage horses.  Mouse _knew_ she was ready; she tossed her shoulder length, muddy red hair in the breeze, which was blowing across the buildings, slightly jostling Jetser in the process.  She had been a thief all her life, well most of it anyways.  The guild had taken her in when she had been a five-year-old river rat, begging for change at the wharf.  She had worked her way up from pocket pincher, to being brought in on other thieves takes.  She had more than paid her dues, she was sixteen and was now ready to be her own thief, plan her own heists, break-ins, and take a better cut of the jib.  Jetser was just worried for her, and if she was honest, so was she.  She tried not to glance around; she knew that she would be under constant observation for the test.  If she passed and made the steal as she had planned, then she would be a fully-fledged thief, if she failed…  Well that hardly bared thinking on, she _would_ succeed.  She had planned this job very carefully. She had found out from the Rumours that the majician that lived in the flat directly across from her owned something rather valuable and would conveniently be out tonight for a soiree at some noble’s mansion on the outskirts of the City.  Tonight was the best night to do her raid.  She was more than a little nervous to be doing this all on her own, the planning and the execution, but that was natural, every thief was nervous for their first solo job.  She squared her shoulders and breathed, after all she did have Jetser with her, so she wasn’t completely alone, “You ready, Jetser?” she asked.  Jetser crawled down her chest and slipped into the pocket of her dusty leather coat, he poked his head and two legs over the lip of her pocket and said jauntily,

“Of course _I_ am, off you pop.”  

Mouse left the chimney’s shadow and moved to the lip of the building and froze.  She gave herself a mental shake and got to work.  On one side of her belt she had some coiled rope that was just long enough to reach the window ledge from where she was.  On the other side of her belt was a soft leather pouch, which she had purloined years ago from a fat merchant in Westside Quay.

She got out her collapsible grapple hook and quickly knotted it to the end of the lead.  She then put a short length of the rope in her hand and began swinging it slowly and silently, giving more of the rope into each swing.  When she finally felt she could do it, she tossed it across the space between the buildings trying to catch the flower box on the ledge beneath the window.  She missed!  And before the rope could hit the ground she quickly wound it back to herself.  Jetser looked up at her silently, willing her to give it another go.  She took a deep breath and tried again.  She slowly swung it out once more and this time as it sailed across the space in a silent arch it caught on the box, decapitating a petunia.  She tightened it and tugged making sure it would hold.  Then she wrapped the other end around the chimney a couple of times and double knotted it just to make doubly sure.  She was rather proud of herself, maybe she could pull this off without a hitch and arrive triumphantly back to the Guild Hall. 

Many of the other thieves her age had already done their own solitary thefts as a way of proving themselves competent when they were just fifteen, and they always had more experienced thieves waiting close by in case something should happen, just as she did.  But nothing would go wrong; she knew what she was doing.  At the moment she was only a pickpocket and a tagalong for the times when a person of smaller stature was needed to slip in through grates, holes, gaps, windows, crannies, cracks, crevices and anywhere else she could be shoved, squished, or scraped through.  She knew she was ready to be on her own.  Being alone was all she had ever really been anyways.  She didn’t even have a real name.  If she could pull off this heist and steal something truly worthwhile, use enough skill, daring, and stealth then she would have to be made a full thief.  She would be seen by everyone to be someone worthy of acknowledgment.

Mouse had planned this night with tremendous care, she had known how she was going to steal it, where it was hidden, and most importantly that the devisor majician who lived alone without any servants would not be there that night, at least not for a while.  She had paid the Rumours quite a bit of money for that tidbit, but this would make it all worth it.  She stood up and slowly placed her foot on the rope and then slid her other foot behind it.  She balanced herself and did a sliding dance across the gap between the chimney and the displaced petunia. 

When she was almost halfway across she heard footsteps and looked down and spotted one of the city guards zigzagging underneath her.  She froze hoping that the moon wouldn’t shine down behind the clouds that concealed it and reveal her shadow or that the guard wouldn’t suddenly glance up from some sixth sense.  She slid her eyes away from so that he wouldn't feel them.  If she was caught by the guards her life would be forfeit, she would be imprisoned and then undoubtedly killed by her fellow thieves to keep the Guild’s secrets, if she didn’t lose her hand or get hanged by the guards first.  The inattentive guard slowly staggered past and turned a corner while humming an intermittent tune.  She breathed a soundless sigh and a prayer of general thanks to Taverns everywhere, and continued on till she got to the flower box.  She crouched down in the soil, the box shifted silently at her slight weight, when she was sure of her balance she opened the pouch at her belt and took out a smooth gray stone with one sharp edge at one end.  It was shaped like the tear of some misbegotten gargoyle or some such and as far as she knew it might very well have been.  She had purchased it from Shmuz, a foreign magician in the Cheap Quarter who often did quiet work for the Guild. 

This stone was supposed to open a hole in magical wardings.  She would find out tonight if it really worked.  She held the stone in her hand and used the sharp end to draw a large oval on the glass of the window, the circle she made glowed bright yellow for an instant which worried her extremely and then the glass she had encircled burned away entirely.  She cautiously stuck her hand through the hole, to make sure both the warding and window were actually gone.  When her fingers went completely through the other side with no effect she stuck her head through and peered into the room.  In the room beyond she saw only darkness, so she slipped silently inside and gave the rope a quick and complicated twist and pulled it in behind her.  So far she must have received high marks from the graders, now to retrieve the item, and skip back to the guild, easy peasy.

She looked around and saw with her Night Sight that the room she was in was a study.  The Night Sight she possessed was a skill learned by many thieves very early.  In order for a thief to live at all long and to steal successfully a thief must not bump into tables and chairs or carry bright torches with them or the like.  They must have the best Sight; the Guildhall itself is in a perpetual gloom to enhance this skill.  Mouse, however, had been born with this talent.  She looked around with her Sight and surveyed the room.  She found that the study was paneled in wood with dark wood flooring covered and layered with many different styled and textured rugs.  There were bookshelves everywhere overflowing with books and papers.  In one corner she saw a creature which she at first thought to be a cat that was glaring at her, but when she looked more closely she found it to be the life size statue of a fox that was curled up nose to tail and looked half asleep.  It seemed like it was made from metal with golden springs and cogs slowly whirling around inside of it.  Its eyes were made of some kind of glittering black substance, she wondered for a moment if she could pry the eyes out, but she didn’t even know what they were, if they were worth anything, or if she could even do so, so she let the strange mechanical fox be.  There were no skeletons or rotting hands or dragon’s blood or mysterious glowing gems lying about or the types of things she generally associated with sorcerers. The one in Cheap Quarter had had many such objects.  However, there was a very foul smell emanating from a mysterious bowl of half finished soup that was lying forgotten on a side table and looked like it had been there for an uncertain amount of days.  She decided that for a majician’s flat it didn’t look very majiciany.  At one end of the room there was a large desk with a wooden chair behind it which was covered in comfortable looking pillows, like everything else in the room the desk was littered with books and papers and to one side of the desk was what she sought, a satiny blue chest covered with white stars… 

She looked down at Jetser silently with excitement written upon her features, which was reflected on his tiny furry face.  The satiny blue chest, she had found out, possessed a very important treasure, the sort of treasure that can make a pickpocket into a full fledged thief who gets seventy percent of all her takes instead of forty.  She knelt in front of it and looked at it hungrily.  She knew it would be much too big to move so she took out the gray stone and made a circle over the lock it glowed orange for a second but did not open.  She frowned a bit and then took out a set of lock picks and set to it with a will.  After about ten minutes of intense work there was a sharp click.  Mouse put her hands on the lid and lifted it gently up.  Inside she saw…sheets of blank paper and empty scrolls.  She looked underneath them and found nothing, she looked for false bottoms and sides and even the lid and there was nothing there!  She sat silently for a moment and chewed on her lip, all her plans were ruined and she was utterly dejected and embarrassed.  Jetser sighed and burrowed himself deeper into her pocket.  She didn’t know what exactly the treasure was.  She had imagined it would be a magnificent gem to summon fire or maybe a ring of powerful majick that would cause those who annoyed you to slam inexplicably into walls, or maybe some mystical singing, bejeweled froggy that made people fall asleep.  Anything of that nature would have been just fine, but there was absolutely nothing!  The Rumours had lied to her… 

Maybe there was some other satiny blue box!  She thought with a flash of hope.  She began to look over the room frantically and as she walked behind the desk, the floor tripped her and groaned rather loudly, then it suddenly sat up and garbled in an annoyed, aristocratic voice, “W-who are you?”

 


	2. Cogs

Mouse gasped and Jetser scrambled deeper into her pocket as she turned around and stared straight into the heavily lidded ash-gray eyes of a man who had been curled up and sleeping almost entirely underneath the desk.  She quickly gathered her wits and ran for the door leading out of the room.  As she reached her hand out to touch the doorknob it bit her!  Mouse snatched her bitten hand back and stared.  The knob was in the shape of a bronze fox head.  It was alive and growling softly as it glared at her.  She threw a frightened look behind her and saw the man shamble slowly to his feet.  He stumbled over to the desk and found a candle and flint by touch and lit it after a couple of tries.  The candle’s light barely reached his face and it put all kinds of shadows over it that didn’t seem to belong there.  The man seemed fairly demonic and had a horrifying resemblance to the portraits of the Possessed, which she had often stared at during her youth at the Cathedral of Saints.  He placed the candle down on a precarious stack of untidy books, and sat directly behind it where he was in its full view, he then appeared far more human and looked prettier than any man should have the right to be.  He was dressed in black, rumpled but stylish clothing such as many of the young noblemen wore to court or so she had seen in the latest chapbook covers.  He was fairly young maybe twenty summers, maybe less.  The wrist he was holding his cheek with in a tired way was as thin as hers.  He was very distracting even considering the situation she was in, and she was in one hell of a situation.  The first rule of a thief was to never get caught; the second rule was to follow the first rule, and she had messed up both. 

He looked at her with a distracted air and a dreamy smile.  His lips turned slightly as he said with vagueness dripping from every word, “You are a rather bold thief...”  Mouse didn’t know what to say, she was obviously a thief, what could she have said in her defense?  If this was the majician who wasn’t supposed to be here she might very well be turned into a rabbit or parakeet if she was lucky or something far worse if she wasn’t, although devisors were supposed to be a different brand of majician, not that she was an expert on majicians, or their works.  At the moment, considering the turn of events so far, she wasn’t feeling very lucky.  He was looking at her, waiting for a reply, but she had none to make, she decided her best bet was to play the terrified little girl, a role she had had to play more than once in her life. 

“Please mister, please I will do anything, please don’t turn me into something nasty, please let me go, I’ll never ever bother you again, please…” She hated begging, even play begging, although she had had experience at both, but she wanted to live, and not as something other than human.  She had thrown in some tears and a couple of shuddering sobs and sniffles for good measure.  The man just looked at her for a moment and then gave a half laugh, which she certainly did not expect or particularly like.

“Well at least you have a sense of humor, thief girl.  I’d hate to be stolen from by a grave robber, for obvious reasons.”  Mouse briefly wondered if she should laugh or not as the young man stopped abruptly and looked carefully at his slim, neatly manicured fingers as he tapped each one against the fingers of his other hand, he glanced at the window with the hole, “Hmm, how did you break through my warding’s by the way, it doesn’t look like you yourself wield any majick?”  He waited for her answer with an air of infinite patience.  Mouse took offense to the word ‘girl’, she was sixteen after all and he couldn’t be that much older than her anyways.  But as she was dealing with a majician whom she had just tried to steal from, who seemed rather more off-balance than most majicians were purported to be, she decided not to vex him over a little thing like terminology.  She walked hesitantly over to the desk, took out the gray stone from her pouch and placed it in front of him.  He made a small sound of interest and picked it up, it promptly slid out of his hand like butter and hit the desk with a pop very unlike that of a stone hitting a wooden desk and turned into sparkling gray dust. 

He looked only minimally annoyed as if he had expected that sort of behavior but had hoped for better manners.  As he stared at the pile of shinning dust on his desk he began muttering under his breath, something about shady, backwater, alley-way magicians, selling black market foolery to underage thieves who cut holes in his widows and mucked up his desk, or something very like that under his breath.  His mouth thinned as he asked her intently, “Who gave you that stasis stone?”  So that was what it was called…  Shmuz, the foreign magician, had only told her how to use it, and little else.  She knew she couldn’t answer the question, she wasn’t allowed to, so she just glared at him.  If she told him anything that could compromise the Guild she would be very, very dead, which is a pretty bad thing to be, and giving up the name of one of the Guild’s personal ‘back-alley’ sorcerers was definitely a quick way to get in that rather permanent position and was therefore something she could not, under any circumstances, do.  She continued glaring at him silently.  After a couple of moments he looked away and muttered,

“So…that’s how it’s to be then, very well.”  He suddenly grabbed her green eyes with his gray ones.  His mask of vagueness dropped, as he searched into her very soul and asked her what it was she had planned to steal from him.  She gathered her will against the sudden pull to answer and decided that she wouldn’t put up with his meandering questioning and condescending tone any longer no matter what he was, she shouted,

“No.  Leave me be!”  The majician got up abruptly and moved around the desk grabbing her by an arm as he demanded with fear colouring his voice,

“You _will_ tell me what it was you searched for!”  She couldn’t pull herself out of his wiry grasp.  Jetser climbed out of her pocket, up her arm and onto the man’s hand.  As she yelled out,

“No!”  The man stumbled back with a yell, trying to shake the tangula off him,

“Ahh!  Spider!  Shit!  Get it off, get it _off_!”  As he yelled and Mouse reached out toward Jetser, she heard a thud followed by a familiar ticking noise and swiftly covered her mouth as steam suddenly filled the room.  Glass shattered and two dark cloaked forms entered through the broken window.  She continued to cover her mouth and try to get to Jetser who had been right in front of her a moment before.  The cloaked people snatched her up, despite her attempts at pulling away, and took her back out through the window and into the night.  Leaving Jetser and the coughing, cursing majician behind…    

 

Back in the majician’s flat, the majician managed to fling the spider from him and on to the desk as he choked on the steam still swirling in the room.  He ran towards a bowl of soup, emptied it and slammed it over the huge spider.  Then he put a stack of books over the bowl.  He coughed a few more times and opened the door to the landing to get some of the steam out of the room.  Then he went to the steambomb, gingerly picked it up with a rag and chucked it out into the street.  As the room cleared he blinked, rubbed his eyes, and sighed. The thief girl and her well-equipped companions had left; he smiled a vague idiotic smile in the direction of the fox statue in the corner and said,

“Eh-hem, it seems thieves take care of their own rather well, wouldn’t you say?”  The clockwork fox slowly lifted its head and blinked its black eyes.  Then it uncured its form and padded over to the majician and jumped nimbly on the desk, scratching it with golden claws.  The fox looked the majician straight in the eyes, nodded and said,

“It is a lucky thing she did not know what she was looking at, or we might have had to kill her immediately.”  The fox laid his head on his paws in a ridiculous parody of deep reflection.

“That is a bit precipitous you know, I think we could have come up with something a little less…irreversible.  But in any case, how _did_ she know where it was, and why would they have sent an inexperienced _child_ of all things?” 

“Yes, that is a very vexing question, it is possible that she knew nothing of it and it was all just a coincidence, though I do doubt it.”  The fox said in a voice that was a mirror of the majician’s own, if a bit more...metallic.

 “It must have been an accident, otherwise all of those thieves might have tried to rush me and steal them, they could not possibly have known, could they?”  The fox twitched a golden ear thoughtfully,

“Unless they knew they could not get it with us here…”  The majician swiped the dust off his desk, careful to not disturb the bowl that was shaking, with an irritated hand saying,

“Well then they will no doubt try their luck again when I am not here.  However, there is little point arguing, we just do not know.  The real question is what should we do now?  If my discovery _is_ known then I will have to flee Ludlow and go abroad.  I cannot risk being found out…”  The majician sighed loudly and glanced at the satiny blue chest that lay open.  The fox got up moved up to him, and as it passed the bowl it paused and said, 

“Umm, I don’t want to alarm you, but I think I hear a voice.”  Demetry Montage, the majician started,

“What?”  The fox cocked its head and lifted a metal paw,

“Listen, I think that spider is…talking.”  Demetry moved cautiously closer to the bowl and heard a very tiny squeaky voice.  He moved the books off the bowl but held it down with his other hand.

“You better be ready to rip it to shreds, alright?”  The fox readied itself and extended its claws above the bowl as it said,

“Fine.  Lift it up.”  Demetry lifted the bowl quickly.  The black and white spider froze as the bowl was lifted and then shouted in a highly agitated tiny voice,                                                                          

“Finally!  Where is Mouse, what have you done with her?”  Demetry breathed,

“Eh?”  The spider lifted up its front legs threateningly. 

“Where is she!?”  Demetry shared a glance with the fox as he questioned,

“Er, and who, or what are you?”  The spider moved up in down in anger,

“My name is Jetser, and I’m a tangula, you ignorant whelp, not a bloody _spider_!”  Demetry sputtered,

“But you’re so tin-.”  Jetser interrupted,

“Don’t say it!  Now where is Mouse?”  Demetry replied,

“The thief girl?  She scarpered with a couple of her sort, or so I assume.”  Jetser swiftly crawled to the edge of the desk and lifted a leg in farewell as he said,

“Well then off I pop, lovely meeting you both I’m sure, and thanks for the soup.  So long.”  Demetry lifted the bowl, ready to cover the tangula with it once again.

“Now wait a second, if you’re with the girl, then I have some questions to put to you.”  Jetser jumped quickly off the desk and scurried to the window as he muttered,

“Only if you catch me first.”  Demetry and the fox both ran towards the window but were far too slow.  The tangula was gone.  Demetry looked at the fox and accused,

“Damn, where were you on that one, eh?”  The fox stated calmly,

“I wasn’t devised to catch small annoying critters.”  The majician sighed as he said,

“Neither was I apparently, Cogs, I hate spiders.”


End file.
